Yes, he could be very personal."

She asked him what he had found in New York as a contrast, coming from
abroad. She spoke of the high buildings here, and from that she passed
quite naturally to her husband's business.

"It isn't the work I'd like for him," she said with a regretful sigh.
"Joe is getting to be like all the rest--he's making too much money."
She waited a moment and added, "I should so like him to be as he was
when you knew him."

"I'll be curious to see how he has changed. You must let me see him,"
Dwight replied.

"Why yes, of course."

"Over in Paris he had so much. He was such a wonderful lad for
dreams--with the most exuberant fancy in the way he used to talk of New
York and what he wanted to do back here--to use the backyards and the
roofs and turn them into gardens. This town, when Joe got through with
it--well, from an aeroplane it was to look more or less like a bed of
roses--or a hill town in Italy. But that was only his lighter vein.
When his fancy was really, working hard, he took department stores,
hotels and huge railroad terminals and jammed them all together into one
big building. How deep in the earth it was to have gone I really can't
remember, nor how far up into the skies. But there was a garden at the
top--or a meadow or prairie or something."

"Yes," thought Ethel, "I'm going to like him."

"Joe could talk of his plans all night," Dwight went on good-naturedly.
"And keep a poor lazy musician like me from my piano where I belonged."

"Was it you who taught him to play?" she asked.

"On the piano? It was," he replied. "Isn't his touch amazing? And so
thoroughly Christian, too."

"Christian?"

"Yes. He doesn't let his right hand know what his left hand is doing."
They laughed. And from that laugh she emerged with eagerness in her
brown eyes.

"Oh, please go on," she begged him. "I had no idea you knew him so
well. Did he do nothing but talk over there?"

"He did--he worked like a tiger. Joe could stand more hard labour in
one consecutive day and night than any fellow I ever met. And he could
do it night after night. I remember dropping in on him for coffee and
rolls one morning. A chap named Crothers and myself--" Ethel started at
the name--"had just come home from the 'Quatres Arts Ball.' We found Joe
in his room with the curtains drawn--he didn't know it was morning yet.
He had a towel bound round his head and was building an opera house for
Chicago--or Kansas City--I